Debbie Lawson's carpet sculptures and furniture
installations take you on a psychological journey through
domestic space, where everyday things are eerily animated and
the very fabric of the interior comes to life. Tinged by a
collective and personal nostalgia, humdrum objects become part
of a “mise en scène” created through the narrative formed by
our own history and memories.

Lawson graduated from the University of East Anglia,
Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art. Solo shows
include Nine Trades of Dundee: Our House at the McManus
Galleries, Dundee (forthcoming) supported by the Scottish Arts
Council; Living Rooms at Nordisk Kunst Plattform, Norway,
supported by the British Council; Dysfuncadelia at Nettie
Horn, London; and Chairway To Heaven at The Economist Plaza,
commissioned by the Contemporary Art Society. She recently
completed two permanent artworks for Town Hall Hotel, London,
co-commissioned and curated by Arts Admin, and her work is
included in the collections of Charles Saatchi, Mario Testino
and the University of the Arts London. Forthcoming shows
include Contemporary Eye: Crossovers (with Jeff Koons, Gary
Hume, Grayson Perry and others) at Pallant House
Gallery.

Richard Stone is based in
London. His object, installation and site-specific based works
have been shown at Schwartz Gallery and Beaconsfield as well
as at further galleries and sites in the UK and abroad.

Stone has a distinctive approach to themes
of absence, transience and death from mischievously re-casting
the dimensions and structural details of gallery and
site-specific spaces to recently engaging viewers as
participants through the reenactment of a memorial.

Materials and found objects are also
intrinsic and seductively reworked or reconfigured, these have
included ornaments engulfed in ghostly auras of smooth
amorphous wax, carpets unraveled and suspended, erased antique
paintings and flowers photographed on the River Thames at
night.

Works often appear in physical and
conceptual states of metamorphosis and flux, incorporating
sharp contrasts of light and dark or are interwoven with
grainy expressions of solitude and stasis.

Stone’s works have been described as
inherently dark and poetic in their range, oscillating in
scale from the intimate to the monumental and as resonating
with art historical and popular cultural references from Felix
Gonzalez-Torres's conceptual work to Peter Saville’s Joy
Division album covers.

My work uses objects to question how space is
claimed and occupied and I am interested in how architectural
space is constructed to influence behavior. Formally,
the work references theatrical props which occupy space
provisionally and challenge the idea of an authentic spatial
identity. I am interested in how objects can complicate
how a space is read and projects have proposed interventions
where the work’s integration with a space is deliberately
precarious and tentative. The intention is to complicate
the expectations of the viewer through proposing questions
about what is framed and on display and their participation in
generating how the work is read. Current work has been
informed by research into visual strategies for spatial
occupation including camouflage, dummy objects and decoys as
strategies of design which are intended to complicate how an
object in an environmen t is recognised, misread or visually
erased in order to understand how objects can occupy space in
more tenuous and temporal ways.

By
using the hand-pump one can experience a refreshing “shower”
as water rains down from the showerhead 7.5 meters above.
Simultaneously amber and blue beacons on top of the 19-meter
structure flash, signaling people as far away as downtown
Houston.

I'm particularly drawn
to overlooked or underutilized environments, from private
imaginary worlds within brick walls, to back alleys, to very
public sprawling open spaces. Whether the work takes the form
of public art, sculpture, installation, or video, it is in
these environments that I tease out small fragments of
narrative by augmenting or amplifying the raw materials of a
given place. I ask the viewer to engage both with what was
always there as well as what might be.

My
public art works are playful, humorous, unexpected and
accessible. They have an ability to engage a broad cross
section of the public, often in situations of unusual
intimacy. The works, which offer a seductive invitation to
participate, support the notion that public art can build
community and have a broad appeal without being what is most
familiar.

In
addition, I approach public art opportunities with the notion
of making the site more congenial and communal for those who
use it. I incorporate motion and change, and have elements
that foster engagement both with the work and among the
viewers themselves. The site always influences the structure
and the materials such that the site itself becomes an element
of the work.

Rebecca Gould works in mixed media,
video and installation. “Gould’s ability to take risks and
employ absurdity has enabled her practice to develop into an
astute critique of contemporary culture. Gould often combines
video and object, concealing the film within the sculptural
form. The sculptural form functioning as an ‘in-between’ a
meeting point connecting the real world to a world of fantasy.
Her recent works explore the complex stream of information and
images fed to us by the commercial world, tactfully drawing
parallels between consumerism, escapism, fantasy and
celebrity. As Gould changes her gaze and develops her practice
as an artist we, her audience, are fortunate enough to see the
world though her eyes, a truly unique experience that adds to
our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.”
(Liberty Paterson, 2010. Independent curator and assistan t
curator at Gl Holtegaard, Denmark)

Gould
(b. 1980) studied Sculpture at UWIC, and completed her MA Fine
Art at Central Saint Martin’s, London in 2005. Gould took part
in Locws 3 and has exhibited extensively in group shows
throughout Wales, as well as in Denmark, Germany and Spain.
She was awarded an individual artist project grant from The
Arts Council of Wales in 2008. She now lives and works in
London.

The
work focuses on using found, commonplace materials and objects
which are incorporated into new sculptures and groupings of
items. The work centre’s on the transformation of these
exhausted materials, ascribing them new status by emphasising
their absurdity, vacuity, or oblique social reference. The aim
is to liberate them from the drudgery of service, allowing
them to masquerade outside their traditional
norm.

These
works are largely informed by an interest in the language of
art and the boundaries that divide an art encounter from that
of an everyday experience. Through enquiries into material,
form and spatial arrangement, the work explores the
displacement and reconfiguration of everyday objects and
materials through installation and sculptural
works.

"At
the end of the fifteenth of his 'Letters on the Aesthetic
Education of Mankind' Schiller states a paradox and makes a
promise. He declares that ‘Man is only completely human when
he plays’, and assures us that this paradox is capable ‘of
bearing the whole edifice of the art of the beautiful and of
the still more difficult art of living’

Russell Chater is based in London and
is a graduate of the MA Fine Art course at Central Saint
Martins. The artist exhibits internationally, with exhibitions
this year including: Shaping Silence at Grey Area
Gallery, Brighton (curated by Roy Exley/part of the Brighton
Photo Fringe) and Sorry We’re Open at Whitechapel Art
Gallery/Unit 2 Gallery, London.

This
recent and ongoing series of work further plays with the
artist’s continued interest in shop window display and
contained and staged spaces. Resulting pieces lie somewhere
between minimalist art installation, empty stage set, designer
interior and box of Christmas decorations. Appropriating items
from the shelves of stationers; DIY merchants; jewellery
stores and charity shops, these familiar assorted items are
rendered ambiguous and seductive via context and
juxtaposition. The works are at once cool and sophisticated,
kitsch and frivolous: A Christmas bauble evokes a Kapoor; a
perspex pencil case a Judd…Ultimately the works operate in the
artistic tradition of everyday items re-presented in contained
and magical little worlds - Cornell being an obvious
exponent.